BALA Town manager Colin Caton has saluted the “solid and disciplined” display that earned his side a 1-0 victory on their Europa League debut against Estonian opponents Levadia Tallinn at Belle Vue, Rhyl yesterday evening.

A fourth minute goal from Ian Sheridan was enough to put the seal on an historic night for the Lakesiders, who will travel to Tallinn for next Thursday’s second leg confident they can finish the job and progress to the competition’s second preliminary round.

Caton said: “It was a phenomenal performance to score in the fourth minute from a well-worked corner and go on to hold out throughout the game.

“I know they had lots of possession and the ball was flying across our box, but we had great chances ourselves.

“Mark Jones had three chances, Ian Sheridan had (another) one and Lee Codling too, and I think if we had been playing for a few weeks longer we’d have taken one of them.

“But we just couldn’t get there and we looked a bit leggy towards the end, which is understandable. Levadia are halfway through their season and we are a month away from starting ours.”

The visitors, who currently top their domestic league with 12 wins from 16 games, were caught cold by Bala’s impressive start, but settled down to dominate possession and territory for the remainder of the match.

Yet a combination of poor finishing and a sterling defensive performance by the Welsh Premier outfit left Levadia empty-handed, Bala overcoming the loss at half-time of defensive stalwart Tony Davies

“Our goal gave them a shock and some people might say we scored a little bit early, but I was happy enough,” added Caton.

“What’s to grumble about scoring in the fourth minute of your first European game? Levadia had plenty of the ball but I don’t think they really hurt us chance-wise.

“We lost Tony Davies at half-time with a knee problem that may be a cartilage, but Ryan Valentine went in there. He’s an experienced campaigner who steadied us a bit and they were not able to play through us.

“They just got out wide and their fitness was going to tell. But hopefully we can get a few sessions in now before we go out there and they have got to beat us now.”

Looking ahead to the second leg, Caton said: “A draw will do us and if they beat us in Tallinn and they deserve to go through then so be it, but we’ll make it as difficult as we can for them, just as we did in this game.

“We won 13 on the trot to get into the Europa League and this makes it 14. Hopefully we’ll go on to 15 next week because it seems there is no stopping us at the moment. Confidence is good because we’ve been under the cosh in many games and not played well, but we put in a really solid and disciplined performance here to get the result.”

The Lakesiders’ boss is not counting any chickens just yet, but insists his team have nothing to fear in Tallinn.

“I’ll be happy if we score in the fourth minute out there but we’ll see how it goes,” he added. “We’re going to get a copy of the match DVD and that will give us more on them. We were in the dark going into this game because we didn’t know anything about them.

“Now at least we’ve seen them, we can work on things and we know their strengths and weaknesses. They know all about us now so it will be a good game out there.

“They are a great bunch of people and I thought tonight was a credit to the Welsh Premier League. The referee was very good and it was a total pleasure to be involved in the game.”